Monthly Archives: January 2010

Every year I set a goal to beat 12 particular games that were released before the new year. I usually give myself until the end of January to set the list. I had a bit of trouble deciding which to include this year, but this seems good. I’ll strike out the ones I’ve completed as I complete them.

inFamous

World of Warcraft – Loremaster

Golden Sun 2

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright: Justice for All

Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Earthbound

God of War

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger

Metal Gear Solid 3

Ballad of Gay Tony

Mad World

Because I had trouble deciding, I’ve also included a second set of 12 “runner up” games…

ChronoTrigger

StarCraft

World of Warcraft – Battlemaster

Uncharted 2

LittleBigPlanet PSP

Chip’s Challenge

World of Warcraft – Dungeons & Raids

Bioshock

Psychonauts

Burning Crusade – Dungeons & Raids

Metal Gear Solid 4

Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations

..and other games that I wish I could get through but aren’t on either list.

Although some people had defeated Rotface in PUGs or with other guilds, Carpe Flux Capacitor as a whole has been unable to defeat 10-man Rotface until this past Tuesday (as I mentioned previously). I had the privilidge of raiding that time, which was my first time in the Plagueworks and second time in Icecrown Citadel, not considering fail PUGs that started on Deathbringer Saurfang, fail guild runs filled with alts and PUGs, and trash runs.
It was really interesting. Festergut was a fun but not very hard fight. I was marked, and the ranged were told to clump on me where I was standing when Festergut used Gas Spore. That just made it extra easy because I didn’t have to move, although I also felt special that people came to me (even if I didn’t do anything).
Rotface was just awesome. Struggling with the guild and trying different tactics is still new to me. It just felt amazing. We had three healers, and on our first couple attempts, we didn’t coordinate. After a few wipes, we decided to be a little more organized. We had one designated tank/melee healer, one raid healer, and one healer focusing on the off-tank kiting the Big Ooze and the players running to him. I was the off-tank healer (and Mutated Infection remover). This made things go much more smoothly.

As Tydros, the off-tank, ran around the perimeter, I made smaller circles on the inside so I could stay near him. I could probably have done my job with a lot less moving, but it made it easier to be near him and watching. There were still a couple problems. First, healing someone running to Tydros wasn’t a big deal, but healing myself while running to him was a bigger deal. I can’t actually say that this caused problems for the group, but it really disoriented me. Another problem was multiple slimes being up at the same time. Sometimes someone with Mutated Infection wouldn’t get to the off-tank in time, leaving a Small Ooze somewhere else. Similarly, this means that sometimes a Big Ooze was exploding while other Small Oozes already existed.
The last problem was that people sometimes were unable to find the off-tank. He was marked at the start of each attempt, but after he got Mutated Infection, he would become marked with a different mark. After the infection was removed, he would no longer be marked, and neither of us (the two people worrying about Mutated Infection) had the ability to remark. I pointed this out, and he was given Assist so he could remark himself if needed. Eventually, on what was to be our last attempt, we got him really low before wiping, so decided to give it one more go. That last attempt (duh) was when we finally downed Rotface.
I also wanted to mention something about ICC-25. I’ve only done a 25-man once, and it was an Icecrown Citadel PUG on a Monday night before raid resets. I had between 800 and 1500 ms latency (most likely due to there being two people sharing Wi-Fi both in 25-mans and both running Vent). The lag kind of sucked. I wouldn’t want to try another 25-man in which people depend on me unless it was a guild run and I could do trash as a trial or a bad PUG that I didn’t care about. Anyways, as a disc priest, I felt that my role was much more defined in 25-man. In 10-mans, even when I’m “tank healing,” I’m still doing extra healing. In the 25-man, I focused just on the tanks. It also seemed like had I not been lagging my Penance could actually heal the tank rather than become overhealing. Regardless, these thoughts on doing 25-mans are just from the one 25-man raid I did before going with on the run that killed Rotface. This is important to note because while that was the first time I felt like my role was really defined, it was before I had that awesome ICC-10 experience. In fact, we had much more coordination as a guild on the 10-man run than the PUG on the 25-man. Still, I’d be interested in trying 25-man content in the future.

iSamJackson / Apple / Reviews
I just posted my review of iSamJackson at Game-Boyz. It’s actually a really funny soundboard featuring Samuel Jackson. I got it from Heatwave Interactive, and they even sent me an iPhone 3G case that says “BAD MOTHER ****** iSamJackson” on it – except that word was written in of course.

Hello World, Desperate Struggle, and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom / /
Murray let me know about Game-Boyz’ blogging feature, so I decided to start blogging a bit over there. I’ll link to my Game-Boyz posts here like I do my reviews. In this one I give a brief introduction to myself before talking about Desperate Struggle and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.

Magnetic Sports Soccer / Apple / Reviews
My review of Magnetic Sports Soccer was posted today on Game-Boyz. It’s sort of like foosball except for two differences. First, only the goalies can move. Second, the ball acts like it’s magnetically pulled to the players. Anyways, it was pretty fun! I received the game for free from publisher Bulkypix.

I’ve been looking at my healing. I don’t really know what conclusions to draw. It seems like Prayer of Mending is the spell that heals the most quite often. Penance is as well, but when I break my 2pT9 bonus, PoM will weaken. I suppose that’s okay because I’ll gain more throughput. It also seems like Penance is most of my overhealing. I already thought that was the case. There are other healers, so Penance never really gets 100% absorbed. I dunno. Also I don’t think Recount considers PW:S’s ability to absorb damage.